Haters gonna hate, illustrators gonna illustrate.

Tag Archives: Fun

I did this wall painting couple of weeks back. It is next to Wanha Kauppahalli, in Helsinki. It’s 6m x 2,4m. I did it with spray paint and a stencil. There’s about 1900 little 5cm x 5cm color pieces in the painting. Name of the painting is “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, a Blade Runner nod.

Wanha Kauppahalli is being renovated at the moment, it’s packaged. You can go check it out if you want. There’s also about 20 other wall paintings there.

I love to paint. This piece was particularly fun to do because I haven’t really spray painted or used a stencil at all. All new for me. I intended the characters to be robots at first, but when they started looking like space invaders, I just went ahead and continued on that path.

The furry creatures are now taken down from Kamppi, but at the very end there was a day of drawing next to the thingies. I was there with the writer of the story, Maria Candia and we drew some illustrations for and with the kids that happened to stop by.

It was a delight. I drew a picture and gave it to a kid and soon after I got one myself! It was so cool. And the kids drawings were much nice and more imaginative than mine of course! 🙂

Wow, it’s been quite quiet on this front recently. I blame my new day job. I work at Rovio now, as a senior graphic designer. Have been for four months now.

Recently I’ve been involved with Napa Illustrations agency’s book Yellow City – Illustrated Stories from Helsinki. In the book the agency’s illustrations illustrate stories from Helsinki, written by Finnish authors. My story’s author was Maria Candia, a science fiction writer extraordinaire.

In the story Maria wrote there’s an alternative universe in which Kamppi shopping center doesn’t exist. Instead there’s a huge pit in the ground in where Köpöttis, these strange furry creatures, live.

Now the story comes to life. My installation is now in Kamppi shopping center. As you can see from the pictures the big boys are made from cardboard and tulle. Whole lot of stapling and voila, the installation is ready.

Well, not quite. It took so much time I couldn’t even imagine half of it. There was usually 3 people working on it, for 2-3 weeks mostly in the evening time, after day jobs. The gluing of the balls alone took quite a lot of time since every ball is made of ten long pieces that had to be glue together.

Luckily there was a lot of capable people working on the thingies from start to finish. I couldn’t have pulled this one off on my own. So, big, big thank you to Johanna, Marjo, Iiro, Maiju, Mia.

The Köpötti’s, as they are called in the short story, are now in Kamppi. Go check them out if you’re around. Kamppi representatives said they are the first ever art installation in Kamppi shopping center. I’m quite proud of that!

I love small toys. You know, the kind that you’d might give to a kid and go “don’t put that in your mouth” and continue to mumble “it WILL get stuck in your throat, and that’s not a pretty sight.”

I’ve found mine from flea markets, mostly. I have nice memories of some of them. Some are just repair parts for less-toy-filled-childhood.

Preference seems to be dinosaur toys. I wanted to be an archeologist when I was a kid.

Oh, and then there’s the strange looking colorful characters. I’d like to know who designed them. I know that they’ve been a Happy Meal toy at some point, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago, but I think they’re brilliant. I haven’t been able to figure out who has designed them. So if you have any info, please share that info with me. Thank you!

Cities are full of visual stories. Signs and symbols, letters and numbers – their main purpose is functional, to give information. What if we looked at them from another angle: as something that, in addition to being informative, can be aesthetically pleasing or tell an interesting story?

Fontwalk is an independently taken stroll up and down the streets of Kamppi, pointing out details and exploring the visual role of graphic design in the streetscape. The route takes approximately 45 minutes to walk and is based on a map distributed free of charge at Napa Gallery. Thirty-one destinations illustrate the past and present of typography and graphic design, and also offer a glimpse of the micro history of the area.

The map is designed by graphic designer Camilla Pentti together with Napa Gallery and will be available at Napa Gallery from April 26, until the edition runs out.

Did a record cover for a friend. Well, a single cover. A typographic bundle of joy.

I made a couple of different color versions of it. The one I liked was the colorful one. The client went with the red / paper texture -version, which turned out good too, in my opinion. I’m just such a sucker for colors. What can I say.

Last day I was there, I rented a scooter and drove around a bit in the mountains of the island. The later part of my day I ran into this abandoned hotel, hotel Monte Palace.

Opened in 1986, the hotel must’ve been an unbelievably beautiful place to stay. The scenery was totally mind boggling. In the middle of a mountain. You could see the Atlantic from both sides of the hotel and the Twin Lakes were just underneath the hotel on the right side. Just… amazing.

The hotel’s said to often be under heavy clouds, but the day I visited it, it as was sunny as it could ever be. Took a few pictures and enjoyed the beautiful decay of something that sometime in the past was luxury.
“Along a quiet mountain road in The Azores is an abandoned hotel called Monte Palace. It was built just over 2 decades ago as a five star luxury hotel. Unfortunately no one visited it due to its extreme price and it was just abandoned very soon after.